Americans didn't join WWII for Europe, almost everyone was staunchly against joining the war before Pearl Harbour, letting Europe and Asia sort out their own problems. They were reluctant after so many died in WWI just to save European empires from other European empires. This just seemed like more of that at the time. Then Japan and Germany declared war on the US, obliging them to fight. Otherwise the people were ready to watch Europe get taken over by Hitler.
That said, the US Government had already decided they had to join the war for self preservation and were working on a way to start to convince people when Japan attacked. That really did the US war effort a lot of favours.
Nothing is more valuable to a military than combat experience. I predict that several if not many of the Western servicepeople that trained Ukrainian soldiers will sit for lectures given by their former students.
Good call to share the military parts to few European countries and the US (while Trumpnis not in power) - too may leaders in bed with Putin to risk sharing specifics with them
As a USian, I'm more than happy to have europe take care of their own security, go right ahead 👍
As European, I think we should work towards being less dependant on USA when it comes to many things not only defense.
Europe shouldn't depend on USA to defend us. NATO shouldn't depend on a single country
More specifically, I would LOVE if the long term dynamic became more of equal partnership and division of concerns - up to and including mutual basing agreements on BOTH sides of the pond.
We have Ramstein and Incirlik and Lakenheath and a bunch of others; maybe it makes sense for the EU to have a few disused bases in the US too - some joint, some just for them. Something in Texas, Alaska, somewhere in the PNW, East coast somewhere, Florida, and Guam would make a lot of sense, I think, even if (outside of Guam and Alaska, for somewhat obvious reasons), I would think they’d be largely training focused - but I think that sort of thing would be extremely helpful in terms of strengthening the alliance, and making the EU as a whole a much more obviously equal partner.
That's the official stance of everybody really.
Unofficially : US doesn't really want that because that would significantly reduce their diplomatic influence and weapons sales. European nations don't want it, because of responsibility, it would be expensive and we would end up with a lot of armed nations that don't really like each other that much.
So, it's really beneficial for everyone that it stays like it is.
Unofficially : US doesn't really want that because that would significantly reduce their diplomatic influence
The US has been pushing a lot of it behind the scenes for several Presidents. As the world's economy becomes more equal, the US can't afford being the only country providing the bulk of defense. There have been some minor disagreements on coordination, but I feel like these disagreements have been inflated.
